Evidence made public by Singapore authorities suggest American engineer Shane Todd committed suicide, according to Bloomberg's Andrea Tan.
Todd's story made international headlines when an in-depth report from Raymond Bonner and Christine Spolar in the FT showed irregularities about his death in his Singapore flat last June. Todd was found hanging from a door in his home.
But according to Senior State Counsel Tai Wei Shyong, Todd's Internet searches in the days prior to his death were suggestive of someone who was suicidal:
Todd’s Internet activity on his laptop showed that he had ran searches on the words including “noose,” “hangman” “methods,” “knots,” and “suicide,” and visited several suicide-related websites, Tai said. The most number of such searches were made on June 23, the day before he was found dead, he said. He also made 19 searches related to depression from April to June 2012, he said.
Todd had been employed by a state-sponsored tech firm in Singapore. The firm, IME, was in talks with Chinese electronics maker Huawei to develop an industrial semiconductor with potential military uses. Huawei has been accused by the U.S. of installing illict monitoring equipment in its products.
When his parents reached Todd's flat, they found a scene they said looked nothing like the police report, raising questions about the local authorities' handling of the case. Todd's mom then found a hard drive containing information about the semiconductor project, prompting further suspicion.
The official coroner's inquiry begins today.
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